fly tying

[t0mb0la]

who ties thier own flies and whats your fave/most sucessful flies?

mine's a green shipmans tied with a red tinsel rib!

[BrianJ]

Thought fly tipping was illegal

[Charlie_Thompson]

I do a bit but I'm rubbish - mainly salmon flies:

Cascades
Shrimp patterns
Hairwing types

Got a load of loop bottle tubes to use as well

[ecoli]

been tying for about 10 yrs now the longer you stick at it the better you get start with easy patterns and get to master the basics , my most productive fly has to be the super glue buzzer in olive but my favorite pattern to tie is the dawsons olive so easy but a killer fly any time of the year

[PaulGH]

I've tied my own flies pretty much since I started fly fishing, most of my fly fishing is on rivers so my main patterns are :

Black Spider
Zulu
Bibio
Pheasant Tail Nympth (and variants made from my now deceased cats light grey fur instead of pheasant tail feathers) which imitate freshwater shrimp pretty well.
Greenwells Glory (dry)
Ginger Quill (dry)
Black Gnat (dry)
small daddy longlegs (dry)

For stillwaters,
Dawsons Olives
Olive Damsels
Blood Worm buzzers
Shipmans buzzers of various sorts
and generally the usual suspects

One thing I have learnt over the years fly tying and fishing, too often a lot of emphasis is put onto 'the perfect fly' the fish really couldn't care less, my best flies are always the raggedy been chewed up repeatedly ones not the prim-photo shoot perfect ones. basically have a go, if it's not perfect, so what, the fish probably won't care, you will get better with practice but in the mean time it's very rewarding to catch on your own flys .

[t0mb0la]

i enjoy tying almost as much as fishing, i've only been doing it a couple of months and am proper obsessed, finding new materials from around the house and other peoples pets, whippet fur is hard, waxy, uniformly short and difficult to both remove from the ever patient dog and dub with but makes a great leggy body/thorax.

my sister is a beast nurse and regularly (for work purposes) shaves seals and other animals, i've got her collecting samples, but she's not so keen on skinning carcasses for the art!

even my angular friends are yawning when i'm telling "exciting" tales from the bench or about how years of genetics and breeding have gone into making birds with crazy long feathers for tying the tinyest of dry flies, they're losers, tying is super interesting!

i also enjoy tying and fishing with bibios but ain't yet mastered palmering, i saw a genetic cock cape (or saddle) in the shop which i thought was Ł4.99 but on closer inspection i realized that there was a sunlight faded 6 before the 4, it had obviously been there a long time!

cheers............tom